Editing is a process in which items of audio/video material are combined to form an audio/video production. Generally audio/video material items are captured from a source in accordance with a predetermined plan. However, typically many audio/video material items are not used in the edited version of the audio/video production. For example, a television program, such as a high quality drama, may be formed from a combination of takes of audio/video material items from a single camera. As such, in order to form the program, several takes are combined in order to form a flow required by the story of the drama. Furthermore several takes may be generated for each scene but only a selected number of these takes are combined in order to form the scene.
The term audio and/or video will be referred to herein as audio/video and includes any form of information representing sound or visual images or a combination of sound and visual images.
In a post production process the items of audio/video material are selectively combined by the editor to form the audio/video production. However in order to select the required audio/video material items to form the production, the editor must review the items of audio/video material that have been generated. This is a time consuming and arduous task, particularly when a linear recording medium, such as a video tape has been used to record the audio/video material items.
In general the quality of the images represented on the recording medium, to the extent that the images and/or sound represent the original source is arranged to be as high as possible. This means that an amount of information that must be store to represent these images and/or sound is relatively high. As a result, the images and/or sound cannot be readily accessed so that the content of the audio/video material items cannot be easily ascertained once recorded. This is particularly so, if a format in which the images and sounds are represented is compressed in some way. For example video cameras and camcorders are arranged conventionally to record a video signals representing the moving images on a video tape. Once the video signals have been recorded on to the video tape, a user cannot determine the content of the video tape without reviewing the entire tape. Furthermore, because video tape is an example of a linear recording medium, the task of navigating through the media to locate particular content items of video material is time consuming and labour intensive. As a result during an editing process in which selected items from the contents of the video tape are combined in an order which may be different to that in which they were recorded, it may be necessary to review the entire contents of the video tape in order to identify the selected items.